Sheriff Clarke brings the crazy, threatens to have HOC Superintendant arrested

Another day, another absolutely bizarre situation from Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke and one of his top toadies, Inspector Richard Schmidt.

Michael Hafemann, the new superintendent of the House of Correction, must have known he was going to butt heads with Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr.

Clarke relinquished control of the facility earlier this year only after a judge told him to do it.

But even Hafemann couldn’t have expected what happened a week ago.

That’s when Clarke’s second-in-command, Inspector Richard Schmidt, issued an order from Clarke directing Hafemann to take some 70 inmates from the packed County Jail. When Hafemann declined, Schmidt then announced Hafemann would be arrested.

A half-hour later, Schmidt called again to issue the same order, followed by another threat to arrest Hafemann for obstruction of an officer.

“I think my first response was, ‘Are you kidding me?'” Hafemann told No Quarter. “I pointed out to the inspector that, no, I had not violated any law, so there would be no basis whatsoever for an arrest.”

But that wasn’t the end of it.

A day later, on Wednesday night, Schmidt — for the third time — issued another order from the sheriff, even after the House of Correction had admitted about 40 County Jail inmates. But this time, Clarke’s top deputy intoned that if the superintendent didn’t do as told, according to Hafemann, “the world will end tomorrow.”

While Clarke’s office didn’t respond to requests for comment, no doubt we can expect Sheriff Clarke to follow his past practice and he will respond to Dan Bice’s report Tuesday morning on Facebook, the sheriff’s official website or local talk radio, as Bice aptly noted in his report.

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1 thought on “Sheriff Clarke brings the crazy, threatens to have HOC Superintendant arrested

  1. This is really, really bizarre. As someone who lives a long way from Milwaukee and doesn’t pay a lot of attention to your local politics I have to ask: how did you get a sheriff like this?

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